In an industry wherein thousands of pounds of food product may be generated in a manufacturing process for public sale and consumption, there is a desire on the part of the food processing industry to identify methods to reduce the cost of preparation of such food products. Such food compositions include, for example spoonable dressings, mayonnaise compositions, pasta products such as egg noodles, baked goods, desserts such as cakes, custards, puddings and pies, frozen desserts, sour cream preparations, cream cheese spreads, and the like.
Eggs are often used in conventional spoonable food products such as, for example, mayonnaise spreads, certain types of salad dressings, desserts such as custards and puddings, frozen dessert products, sour cream products, and cream cheese products. Although many food compositions can be made by simply eliminating eggs, especially the yolk, from the recipe, the resulting food compositions are generally adversely affected. For example, the elimination of eggs often results in poorer flavor, texture, and odor. Thus, such egg-free or reduced level egg food products have generally not received high acceptance by consumers.
Numerous attempts have been made to provide such foods with acceptable organoleptic properties and/or to treat eggs or egg products to make them more acceptable in generating food products with desirable organoleptic properties. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 5,080,911 to Saitou et al. relates to a process for modifying the properties of egg yolk wherein egg yolk is treated with phospholipase D, resulting in the conversion of phospholipids contained therein into phosphatidic acid and thereby improving the emulsifying characteristics of the treated egg yolk.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,675,202 to Wenger et al. relates to a process for sterilizing egg yolk wherein an aqueous slurry of egg yolk is acidified to a pH of less than 6.0 and then treated under ultra high temperature processing conditions for a time sufficient to sterilize said egg yolk.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,314,706 to Colarow et al. relates to an egg yolk composition fortified with exogenous soybean lysophospholipids (an emulsification agent used in oil and water emulsions). The lysophospholipids may be obtained by hydrolyzing phospholipids derived from soybeans with phospholipase A2, deactivating the phospholipase A2, and then heat treating the resulting lysophospholipids. The use of lysophospholipids in egg yolk compositions is reported to increase the emulsification characteristics of the egg yolk compositions.
Palmer et al., "Salted Egg Yolks: 2. Viscosity and Performance of Acidified, Pasteurized and Frozen Samples," Food Technology, Vol. 23, pp. 1486-1488, reports that acidification treatment of salted egg yolks, alone does not affect the formation of stable mayonnaise. Acidification in combination with pasteurization, however, damages the emulsifying characteristics of such treated egg yolks.
Chung et al., "Heat Denaturation and Emulsifying Properties of Egg Yolk Phosvitin", Journal of Food Science, Vol. 60, pp. 906-908, states that heat treatment of phosvitin, the major phosphoprotein in egg yolk, decreased the emulsion-stabilizing ability of egg yolks to which such treated phosvitin is added.
There remains a need for a source of egg yolk compositions for use in emulsion-containing food products which permits use of less egg yolk, oil, and/or other ingredients in the emulsion-containing food products, thereby significantly reducing the cost of such food products, while at the same time, not significantly affecting the textural, organoleptic and flavor-containing properties of the food product. There is likewise a need for methods for the generation of such egg yolk compositions which significantly reduce the amounts of eggs, oil, and/or other ingredients (e.g., thickeners, gums, starches, and other emulsifiers) that are required for the manufacture of egg yolk-containing emulsion-based food products. The present invention provides such compositions and methods.